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| April 11, 2010 | Secretive Vatican to open up on sex abuse cases, to meet more victims | |
Rome:The Vatican has announced that Pope Benedict XVI will meet with more sex abuse victims as part of an attempt to increase the transparency of the church's internal justice system. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the office once known as the Inquisition, has long epitomised the secrecy of the Vatican, with responsibility for banning books and meting out punishments as severe as xcommunication and burning at the stake. Now, according to The Independent,
as the office's handling of child-molesting priests comes creasingly under fire, the Vatican is starting to open up. Tomorrow, it will release online a concise
guide for the layman on how the congregation handles sex abuse allegations. This
follows the Vatican 's announcement that Pope Benedict XVI would meet with more
abuse victims, and that transparency in dealing with abuse allegations is an "urgent
requirement" for the church – a sharp turnabout in Rome 's previously defensive
response to the scandal. The softening of the previously haughty line comes as
two new cases emerged. A letter written by a now-dead Canadian bishop shows church
officials knew of sexual abuse allegations involving a priest before his promotion
to a top Vatican post and then discussed with Vatican officials how to keep the
scandal from becoming public. The second case involves a Catholic priest who was
defrocked after a nun accused him of raping three children in Bolivia has been
living with his family in Uruguay for more than a year – with the full knowledge
of Uruguayan church officials – despite an Interpol warrant for his arrest. The
new layman's guide doesn't contain any information that isn't available to the
public through a trip to a specialised religious library or a Vatican bookshop.
But it puts various sources of complicated canonical procedures together in a
concise, easy-to-read, one-page guide, without cumbersome canon law citations
and Latin phrases. The church's internal justice system for dealing with abuse
allegations has come under attack because of claims by victims that their accusations
were long ignored by bishops, more concerned about protecting the church, and
by the congregation, which was headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger from 1981 until
he was elected Pope in 2005. According to Vatican norms, issued in 2001 and summarised
in the new guide, a bishop must investigate every allegation of sexual abuse of
a minor by a cleric. If the accusation has a semblance of truth, the case is referred
to the congregation, which decides how to proceed. The congregation's disciplinary
department, which weighs each case, is composed of 10 people: Monsignor Charles
Scicluna, who is the promoter of justice or chief prosecutor; the bureau chief;
seven priests; and a lay lawyer, though other officials from other Vatican offices
are brought in for specific cases. They can decide to authorise the diocese to
pursue either a judicial or an administrative trial, both of which can condemn
a priest to a number of penalties, including defrocking, or what the church calls
being reduced to the lay state. Victims can also seek damages. Or the congregation
can conduct a trial on its own, although that is rare. If the evidence is overwhelming,
the congregation can refer the case directly to the Pope, who can issue a decree
dismissing the priest from the priesthood altogether. |
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